They were detained inside the closed border zone, an area sealed off by fences with barbed wire. Russian prosecutors subsequently initiated legal proceedings against the border violators.

This week the prosector’s office in Pechenga, the Russian border municipality, sentenced the men to six months of jail. The sentence has not yet come into force, a press release reads.

The Afghans had made it to Murmansk in mid-September 2017 where they rented a flat and subsequently managed to get a lift to the Pechenga municipality. From there, they made it into to closed border zone. The young men had done away with all identity papers during their stay in Murmansk, the Pechenga prosecutors office says.

On the Russian side of the border, the barbed wire fence stretches all 196 kilometers. The fence has alarm system and in some areas near public roads, there are also surveillance cameras working day and night. The fence is in different distances to the border line itself, some places a few hundred meters, other places several kilometers from the border.

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In the autumn 2015, some 5,500 migrants where allowed to leave Russia and enter Norway at the Borisoglebsk-Storskog border checkpoints. The so-called “Arctic Migrant Route” ended in late November 2015.